When Fighting Trump Isn’t Enough to Win Another Term

As Democratic heretics go, Representative Dan Goldman isn’t guilty of many crimes against his party. He initially won election to the House after prosecuting the first impeachment of President Trump (whom he now calls a “fascist”), and during two terms, he has voted overwhelmingly with Democratic leaders—even swinging to their left by backing Medicare for All and the abolition of ICE. Goldman isn’t tainted by scandal, nor is he on death’s doorstep; at 50, he’s pretty young for Congress.Yet if the polls in New York’s Tenth Congressional District are anywhere near correct, Goldman will lose his bid for reelection in a primary later this month to another middle-aged Jewish guy aligned with progressive causes. Brad Lander, a former New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, is challenging Goldman from the left, seeking to parlay an endorsement from the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, into a House seat.Lander’s case against Goldman spans from the parochial to the global. Goldman refused to endorse Mamdani’s mayoral bid last year even after the former state legislator captured the Democratic nomination, and he was slow to turn against Israel’s war in Gaza, which Lander (like Mamdani) calls a genocide. “He’s fundamentally out of step with the core progressive values of the district,” Lander told me.Goldman says Lander is exaggerating the gulf between them. “I am a progressive, I have a very progressive agenda, and I am very aligned with the district,” he told me. “I think 95 percent of the time we would vote the same way.” A few Goldman allies I interviewed seemed perplexed that the liberal wing of the party would want to defeat him. After all, he’s no Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, the centrist Democrats who stood in the way of some of former President Biden’s top priorities. Nor is he like John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat and onetime darling of the left who has become the party’s most ardent defender of Israel. “I don’t think he’s done anything wrong,” M